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Today I’m taking a closer look at two pale neutral acrylic paints – N8 neutral gray and titan buff. I’ve used titan buff quite extensively and have just recently added N8 neutral gray to my collection. Both are quite pale – they land at about 8 on a value scale from 1-10, with 1 being black and 10 being white. This means both are two steps darker than pure white. Either will be useful if you want to lighten a colour but also neutralize a little bit at the same time. You can think of either of them as “almost white.”
Titan buff
Titan buff is created by Golden Artist Colours, and is a warm, pale neutral – a creamy ivory or almond hue. I’ve used it quite extensively as a background colour, where I just want a clean, warm background. I’ve also used it when mixing, particularly when I want to show light hitting a surface, because it adds a bit of warmth.
The pigment used in Titan Buff is PW 6:1, which is a type of titanium dioxide with a little bit of iron in it to give it warmth. It’s very opaque, so similar to titanium white, it will cover very nicely.
N8 Neutral Gray
The second colour I’m looking at today is also by Golden: N8 Neutral Gray. The N8 references where it fits on a value scale from 1-10. Golden has an entire line of neutral gray paint, one for each colour of the 10-step value scale.
N8 Neutral Gray is a mix of pigments, including PW6 (titanium white), PBk9 (bone black) and PBr7 (brown iron oxide). This means you don’t necessarily need to buy a tube if you would rather just mix it yourself, but it can be convenient to have a pre-mixed tube.
Mixing with Titan Buff and N8 Neutral Gray
For my mixing tests, I used artist-quality paints in the following colours:
- Hansa yellow lemon
- Cadmium-free yellow medium
- Cadmium-free red medium
- Quinacridone magenta
- Ultramarine blue
- Phthalo blue (green)
- Dioxazine purple
- Sap green hue
- Vat orange
Results
Watch me test out titan buff and N8 neutral gray on my Youtube channel.
Both titan buff and N8 neutral gray neutralized the colours nicely. Neither mixing sheet seemed dramatically different to me. There were some differences, certainly, but nothing dramatic. Titan buff very slightly warmed up the mixes, while N8 neutral gray seemed to generally just neutralize without pulling the colours one way or another.. The reds did turn a touch purple though, with N8 neutral gray. The yellows also became a touch olive-ier as well.
I also did a pair of paintings, one using titan buff and the other using N8 neutral gray. This is where I found very little difference. Each of them seem so similar. I fully expected one to clearly lean warm, with the other to lean cool but it was just a slight difference.
I think there’s room for one of these on an artist’s palette but I personally won’t be too concerned about which one I have. I’m almost out of titan buff so I won’t purchase it again and just use my nearly new tube of N8 neutral gray. I also think it’ll be easy to create a warmer neutral by just adding a touch of yellow ochre to N8 neutral gray.
Learn more
Check out a listing of all my colour mixing blog posts and videos on my colour mixing roundup article.
Get your own
Pick up your favourite shade of “almost white” at your local art supply store or on Amazon:
US
Canada
